A fancier 1,200th car on Autocade

21.07.2010/12.52

Writing about cars calms me. So call me a freak. And maybe I’ve just needed to chill more in this last month as we head into the last few months of the mayoral campaign. It surprises me that Autocade has reached 1,200 models: 100 in the past month. And since I knew we were […]

Replacing a social network near you: real life

19.07.2010/12.33

As news emerges that teenagers have spent less time on Facebook, and there are more proﬁles getting closed on the social network, Sony has released its newest trailer for The Social Network. After 9-11, it’s time to tell the “other” story of the ’noughties. And if Facebook is the topic of a Hollywood ﬁlm, then […]

Autocade grows to 1,100 models: slowly but surely

22.06.2010/10.39

Some weeks ago, as we neared this milestone, I planned to write a small blog post on reaching 1,100 cars at the Autocade site. And to show that these milestones are not rigged, we wound up with a fairly ghastly motor at that 1,100 mark. Nissan Cherry (E10/KPE10). 1970–4 (prod. unknown). 2- and 4-door sedan, […]

Chevrolet doesn’t understand branding

11.06.2010/11.55

After the chaps at Autocar began following me on Twitter yesterday—after all, I had been reading the magazine since it was part of the Ministry of Magazines, in the post-Iliffe days—I noticed a Tweet about Chevrolet asking its dealers to not refer to the brand as Chevy. What? According to Autocar: A leaked […]

Toyota’s recent “30-degree” scandal in China

16.03.2010/00.23

Sam Flemming in Advertising Age mentioned the scandal that Toyota has been embroiled in inside China, before a lot of the bad press it received in the occident over “unintended acceleration”. This involved a netizen, an owner of a Toyota Highlander Sport, ﬁlming that his SUV was unable to get up a 30-degree incline, […]

Back on Firefox 3·0: I have had enough of the daily crashes

28.02.2010/11.56

As of today, I am back with the reliable Firefox 3·0 on my desktop machine as well. Firefox 3.5 would generally crash daily, though I remember there was once a three-day period in January when it did not crash at all. (There were other days when it would crash two or three times, just to […]

Saab promises new generation of cars will have original DNA

26.02.2010/23.31

Rumour has it that the new Saab—a small car (ﬁnally)—will resemble the ur-Saab, the 92. In fact, inside Saab, it has the codename 92. Where have I heard this one before? I know. Stefan Engeseth’s Detective Marketing, 2001 edition. And from what I understand, since in 1999 I could not read much Swedish, it […]

Toyota’s troubles stem from forgetting its principles

06.02.2010/09.35

I was surprised to learn that Toyota still has not issued a worldwide recall of its troublesome Prius NHW30 model, even though one had gone out in New Zealand. In layman’s terms, the brakes allegedly don’t work when you want them to. In more complex terms, the software has trouble distinguishing between different types […]

Taxis signal how a local car industry is going

04.02.2010/05.21

When Fiat was in the poo, I remember heading in to Italy and the cabs were a mixture of German and French cars, with a few Italian ones. Generally, it was a reﬂection of the state of the local motor industry: cab drivers are, perhaps subconsciously, patriotic and quite traditional. If they reject the local […]

Steve McQueen, advertising spokesman, 1980 to date

16.01.2010/05.05

Found on Pete’s Tumblr today. Can you believe it’s been 30 years since the man died? A few weeks later, John Lennon was murdered. Very enjoyable, though I still like the old Ford Puma ad from a decade ago: My American friends prefer a later Steve McQueen ad promoting the Mustang: I still think […]